For four centuries, enslavers sailed along the western African coast to pack the hulls of their ships with “a full complement of negroes.” Millions of captive Africans were loaded onto slave ships as commodities certain to bring a profit. The traumatic journey from western African to the Caribbean and the Americas became known as the Middle Passage During the 1500s trade relations grew between Africans and Europeans along the western coast of Africa. By 1700 the trade in enslaved people had beco